Black Box Recorder

Prepare for impact.

2.10.03

Israel issues tenders for 600 new settlement units

While Powell is busy fretting and being "concerned" over Israel's illegal colonization of the West Bank, the Israeli government has announced plans for 600 new units to be built in various settlements.

One has to wonder if Powell's "concern" is that the Israeli government isn't expanding the settlements fast enough.

There is a point with the settlements past which a Palestinian state will be impossible. I think that we have already passed that point. What then, when Israel is too far into the West Bank to pull out? A number of commentators (Meron Benvenisti, Avraham Burg, even Thomas Friedman) have, correctly, brought up the issue of Israel and an apartheid system. But many, incorrectly, see it as some vague danger down the road, not as an actual, present day-to-day reality for Palestinians. I wonder what it will take for these people to finally admit that Israel has an apartheid system in place. Another 55 years? 36 years? Annexation and a legal code explicitly stating this in terms so clear that even the densest person in the world cannot fail to grasp what is happening? A big flashing neon sign in the West Bank saying "APARTHEID HERE"?